Е.H. Makarchuk
National University "Lviv Polytechnic"
Synergetic approaches to studying the history of party journalism
By analyzing the categories of synergetic terminology the conclusion about the opportunities for their application to the needs of studying the history of journalism is made.
Keywords: categories of synergetics, the history of party journalism

Е. Г. Макарчук 
Национальный университет «Львовская политехника» 
Синергетические подходы в изучении истории партийной журналистики
Проанализированы категории синергетики под углом возможности их применения к изучению истории партийной журналистики. Инновационные идеи предоставляют новые возможности в изучении этой составляющей теории и практики журналистской деятельности.
Ключевые слова: категории синергетики, история партийной журналистики.

Synergetics as an interdisciplinary trend emerged in the second half of the twentieth century on the basis of criticism of classical science. The synergetic theory proposed new categories, essential for understanding the essence of modern journalism, including its important component – the party press.
First of all, these are the so-called open nonlinear systems. We have to state that journalism is impossible without constant and versatile interaction with other systems. For example, the first party Ukrainian editions that emerged in the late XIX century in Western Ukraine (which at that time was the part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) sought for settlement not only with the administrative authorities of Vienna but also with representatives of the Dnieper (Russian) politicians.
The idea of nonlinearity in party journalism can be characterized by the multivariate (alternative) ways of development for different periodicals. Thus, the revolutionary illegal newspaper «Iskra», founded by V. Lenin in 1900, was intended not only to reflect the position of several members of the editorial staff but also to unite the scattered Social Democratic movement of that time in Russia.
Since 1903, the former press body of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), after the split of the party passes into the hands of its Mensheviks wing. Instead of that, the Bolsheviks created a newspaper «Vpered», which not only fought against the Mensheviks’ «Iskra», but also united the party members on the basis of Lenin’s ideas. The Third (Bolshevik) Congress of the RSDLP in London (1905) approved a new party press body – the newspaper «Proletary» which essentially continued the Leninist line.
Synergetics demonstrate how to operate complex systems and effectively manage them on example of the press, in particular, the Bolsheviks press of the beginning of the XX century. It turned out that the main thing was not power (in this context – volume, influence, popularity of the periodicals) but the architecture of influence on the complex system (the autocracy regime). Small but properly organized resonance effects on complex systems were extremely effective.
An important category of synergetics is the disequilibrium of the system, which is associated with its own peculiarities and with the imbalance of the environment. For example, the Marxist theory of journalism originated and was formed in the middle of the XIX century in conditions of growing social-class contradictions (the exogenous imbalance of the political system). At the same time, a talented and productive political journalist (at that time), Karl Marx, headed the opposition newspaper «Rheinische Zeitung» in Cologne, whose authorial staff remained anonymous in its majority, and led a constant struggle against censorship, and ultimately appealed for a revolutionary renewal of the world.
In an unbalanced social environment, the actions of each individual may affect macro-social processes. Thus, in 1920, the ideologue of the National Socialist Party of Germany, Alfred Rosenberg, made the transformation of the recondite suburban Munich newspaper «Völkischer Beobachter» into the main mouthpiece of the Nazi party with a volume of more than 1,5 million copies (in 1944). This newspaper (which initially had a volume of only 8,000 copies) played a significant role in spreading the Nazi ideology and the victory of the recently marginalized party in the elections in July and November 1932. It is clear that there also were purely objective factors, which influenced those processes: the world economic crisis, the dispersal of left-wing forces in Germany and Europe, the psychological burden of the Weimar Germany’s disgraceful Versailles peace, and so on.
Thence ensues the necessity for constant awareness of the journalist of the burden of responsibility for the fate of the social system and contemporary society.
We conclude that the basic principles of synergetics can become the basis for studying the history of party journalism.